Survivors of Ivory Coast stampede blame barricades

AP, ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast

Thu, Jan 03, 2013 - Page 1

Survivors of a stampede in the Ivory Coast that killed 61 people, most of them children and teenagers, after a New Year’s Eve fireworks display at a stadium said yesterday that barricades stopped them from moving along a main boulevard, causing the crush of people.

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara ordered three days of national mourning and launched an investigation into the causes of the tragedy, but two survivors, in interviews with The Associated Press, indicated why so many died in what would normally be an open area, the Boulevard de la Republic. An estimated 50,000 people had gathered in Abidjan’s Plateau district to watch the fireworks.

“Near the Justice Palace we were stopped by some people who built wooden blockades in the street,” 33-year-old Zoure Sanate said from her bed in Cocody Hospital. “They told us we must stay in the Plateau area until morning. None of us accepted to stay in Plateau until the morning for a celebration that ended at around 1am.”

“Then came the stampede of people behind us,” she said. “My four children and I were knocked to the ground. I was hearing my kids calling me, but I was powerless and fighting against death. Two of my kids are in hospital with me, but two others are missing. They cannot be found.”

Another hospital patient, Brahima Compaore, 39, said he was also caught in the pile of people stopped by the roadblock.

“I found myself on the ground and people were walking on me,” Compaore said. “I was only saved by people who pulled me onto the sidewalk.”

Local newspapers are speculating that thieves set up the roadblocks so that pickpockets could steal money and mobile phones from the packed-in people.

Ouattara pledged to get answers. Some observers wondered why police did not prevent the tragedy.

“The investigation must take into account all the testimonies of victims,” he said yesterday. “We will have a crisis center to share and receive information.”

Ouattara also postponed the traditional new year’s receptions at his residence, which had been scheduled for today and tomorrow.

The leader of a human rights organization said that deadly incidents were predictable because the police and civil authorities had not taken adequate protective measures.

“The situation is deplorable,” said Thierry Legre, president of the Ivorian League of Human Rights. “It is our first tragedy of 2013, but in 2012 we could already see possibility of such a tragedy because there are not adequate authorities patrolling our roads and waters.”

The New Year’s Eve stampede “exposes our weak and dysfunctional civil protection system. This must be corrected immediately,” Legre said.

He called on the government “to implement measures to avoid such tragedies in the future by reinforcing the civil protection system.”